


within your soul love's tender words i'll hide

by melodiousmadrigals



Category: Wonder Woman (Movies - Jenkins)
Genre: (major character REVIVAL), 1918!AU, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Don't copy to another site, F/M, Fix-It, Post-Canon, Post-Canon Fix-It, Steve Trevor Lives, the opposite of major character death
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-16
Updated: 2020-12-16
Packaged: 2021-03-11 04:14:13
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,104
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28099008
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/melodiousmadrigals/pseuds/melodiousmadrigals
Summary: Steve is seconds from death. He feels it as acutely as he feels his own heart, thrumming away in his chest, beating a fast, abrasive plea to live. All he needs is a little more altitude, and then he can blow the plane up. He tries to steady his breathing, and glances around the cockpit in an effort to distract himself. And that’s when he sees it. If it is what he thinks it might be…well, that could change everything.AKA: Steve can save the day, but this time, he finds a way to save himself, too. A 1918 Fix-it fic before WW84 drops!
Relationships: Diana (Wonder Woman)/Steve Trevor
Comments: 12
Kudos: 146





	within your soul love's tender words i'll hide

**Author's Note:**

> In honor of WW84 coming out, I'm finally posting this! It's been sitting in my drafts folder for over a year, and even though it never quite got to where I wanted it to be, I am pleased with bits of it, and wanted to put it into the world before I started hyperfixating on WW84 content. Enjoy :+) 
> 
> PS: Content warning for references to canon-typical violence and 'shellshock' (PTSD).

Steve is seconds from death. He feels it as acutely as he feels his own heart, thrumming away in his chest, beating a fast, abrasive plea to live. All he needs is a little more altitude, and then he can blow the plane up. 

He can save today. 

He tries to steady his breathing, and glances around the cockpit in an effort to distract himself. And that’s when he sees it: a bulging pack stuffed haphazardly behind his own chair. 

If it is what he thinks it might be… 

He’s read about parachutes before, knows that they started as a kit for balloon operators, knows that the Germans have started to make them, if not standard issue, then at least increasingly available to pilots. He’s never used one, because the British believe it is nigh on a sin to abandon a plane that might be salvageable if properly piloted down—hell, some ace piloting and a miracle landing is how he defied death the first time (and second and third). But he knows how they work, in theory. The tattoo of his heart gets louder, as though it’s realized this could save him. 

There isn’t any time to lose, so he straps himself into the harness as best he can. Checks his altitude one more time. Opens the cockpit door, and feels the cold bite of the rushing air outside. Steels himself.

The parachute will only deploy based on his own weight falling out of the plane. It’s probably suicide, but his options are being blown up (certain death) or falling (only likely fatal). He’ll have to take the odds. 

He exhales, slow. Conjures the image of Diana, glowing in the soft, dappled light of this morning's sunrise.

Shoots. 

And falls. 

* * *

High above her, against an inky black sky, Diana sees an airplane explode. 

Her scream is foreign to her own ears. It cannot encompass the anguish she feels. 

_I wish we had more time. I love you._

His last words echo, again and again. 

Ares will feel her wrath. His grip upon this world is over. 

_Forgive me, Steve,_ she thinks. _I love you, too._

* * *

The explosion happens too quickly, and Steve falls too slowly. 

It doesn't feel like it, of course, in the moment, but Steve falls from the plane, deploying the parachute behind him, and though it is not caught in the plane itself, the explosion catches the edge of it, and the edge of Steve. 

He is concussed by the blast, and a hole burns into the edge of the chute. 

There is so much air whipping around it as he falls that the slow-burning silk extinguishes, but the chute is still compromised. 

The seconds blur, and then Steve hits the ground harder than he should, with a sickening crunch. Everything goes black. 

* * *

Diana stands on the airstrip as the first rays of light break over the horizon. They have won, and somewhere in the distance, bells toll; bells, she later learns, that signal the armistice. 

Ares is defeated. He is dead, but so is Steve. 

It thrums under her skin, a constant beat that she carries with her. _(Steve is dead. Dead. Dead.)_

That first morning is far from the worst. Diana is numb, mostly, and that holds off the deepest sadness, the unbearable ache and longing that will follow. 

Charlie and Sameer and Napi are all there. She doesn't stay long, except to confirm that the gas has been destroyed. A small part of her wonders if she should aid in the cleanup, but the rest of her is detached; she did her duty, and this is no longer her mission.

_(Steve is dead.)_

It is two whole days before she cries properly. That's how long it takes for them to make it back to London, for her to be alone with Etta. Once the tears come, it is hard to stop them. 

She cries for all of the lives lost in the war. She cries for this miserable world she finds herself in, for all the atrocities people commit against each other every day. She cries for Etta, who has lost a friend; for Charlie, who has lost a part of himself; for Sameer, who has lost his dreams—who was robbed of them; for Chief, who has lost his people. She cries for Steve, who lost his life, gave it because he felt it was a necessary trade-off to save thousands. She even cries for herself, briefly, for the love she has lost. 

_(Steve is dead.)_

Bitterness has never been a staple of Diana's character, and when she stops crying, she refuses to let it seep in. Still, the sorrow clings to her, burrows in and makes itself comfortable. Becomes bedmates with her guilt.

Etta takes her to the celebration—and makeshift memorial—and when she sees Steve's picture, she ghosts her hand over it, and smiles, sad and sweet, because even after everything, she's glad she got to meet him. That she got to love him, for however brief a time. She aches so very deeply at his loss, but she knows that he died as he lived: a little impulsive, and trying to make the world a better place. So she smiles, smiles at the frozen moment of the charming man, leaning against the plane and grinning, and silently thanks him for reminding her that humanity is worth it. 

They stay only long enough to pay tribute to Steve and appreciate the revelry of a now-hopeful London, and then Etta, wise in the way that only experience with profound sadness can bestow, takes Diana home. The flickering log in the hearth is cheery, and they get on like a house on fire, but the war has left its mark on them both, and perhaps their grief is just another of the ways they bond. 

_(Steve is dead.)_

* * *

Everything hurts, and the world is on fire again, or maybe it's just his body. 

The screams of horses and angry shouts of men penetrate the bubble of his wrung-out senses, and Steve thinks maybe this is hell. 

There's a man over him, saying words, and then the fire suddenly morphs back into the inky abyss.

* * *

"You are not like them," Diana muses quietly, one evening when she is sitting with Napi by the dying fire, the last two awake. (He is no stranger to sleeping on Etta's couch, as he cycles in and out of London with his various dealings. Sameer has done it, on occasion, too.)

"In many ways," Napi agrees. "Which did you mean?" 

Diana tilts her head. There are plenty of responses that would suit, if she wanted to back out of this conversation. Loud. European. Brash. 

"Mortal," she says softly, instead. She's known, since the moment they met, that there was something different about Napi, other than the languages he spoke and the history of his people and the way he carried himself. She put her finger on it recently: as human as he seems, that is not his only biological heritage. 

Napi watches her a moment, and then shakes his head. 

"You are not quite like me either, are you," she adds, more statement than question. 

A pleased look crosses Napi's face. "Not quite, no. We are both the children of gods, but your gods are different from mine." 

She nods. That is logical, what she expected. 

"Will you return to your people, now that the war is over?"

Napi levels her with a careful look. "Will you?"

She does not need to respond, because she can read his answer, the very same as her own, staring back at her from the depths of his eyes: _Very little is left for me there, now._

They are displaced. Detached. Changed by their experiences, and unable to fit where they may have once belonged. 

"Will you indulge me a story?" Diana asks. Her people have an archive, but their oral histories are stronger, richer. It is the best way she can think of to carry the weight of their memories, and she hopes it might be the same for Napi.

If Napi is surprised, he doesn't show it. "From before?" he asks.

Before the war, before his people were systematically killed, before hers were slaughtered on a beach, before grief was seeped into their bones and took up residence in their hearts. 

"Yes." 

"Long ago, when the world was new…" says Napi softly, in Siksiká.

Tonight, they will swap good memories, and maybe tonight, fortified by the embrace of their roots, Diana will not have to chase away the ever-growing nightmares. She closes her eyes and lets the magic of another time and place wash over her.

* * *

When Steve blinks awake, he is in extreme pain, worse than anything he's ever experienced. Worse, even, than the crash onto Paradise Island. 

He squints, trying to clear the fog in his head, and an orderly pauses to look him over. 

"You're a lucky one," he says in poor German. 

"Huh?" manages Steve, who can barely think in English, let alone German. 

"You're right lucky," repeats the orderly, this time in English, and needs no prodding to continue, "They found you, half dead, a bit of your parawhatsits strung through a tree, but the doc still has a conscience, and says since you still had a pulse, we had to treat you, even if you are German."

"I'm not," croaks Steve. "American."

"Funny way of showing it with that German uniform that you got on there." 

"Captain Steven Rockwell Trevor, United States Army Air Service, identification number 8141921," Steve grits out. "I have to get back to London, immediately." 

"Pffft," snorts the orderly. "I can get you a proper doctor, but I don't think that you're going anywhere just now, mate." 

Steve soon learns that he is not, in fact, going anywhere soon. He has several broken bones (including a leg and at least three ribs), and a number of burns. The doctor, who at least does believe he's Allied forces, laughs when he says he has to get to London. 

"We all do, son," he says, and isn't any help when Steve pleads for him to send a telegram. "We may be in the middle of an armistice, boy, but the War Office is busier than ever. No one has time for a telegram about another injured soldier."

And so Steve is forced to wait. The recovery is excruciating, and excruciatingly slow, especially as winter sinks her claws into the region. 

He has more time than he'd like to ruminate on the past few months: he relives moments over and over, both in sleep and awake, and tries not to let memories torture him, even as they needle at him. (He sees friends die, over and over. Flinches at the sound of bullets whistling by that don't exist. Wakes up drenched in a cold sweat with vestiges of a nightmare of a fiery, exploding plane fresh in his mind.) 

Sometimes—more often than not, really—he thinks of Diana. It is simultaneously a balm and a torture; he has no way of knowing what became of her. (He has hope that she is alive: the armistice proceeds, and he eventually gets ahold of an old newspaper with an obituary of a Patrick Morgan. He thinks she probably won.) He replays, too, their conversations. Thinks of all the ways he failed her. Supposes she probably returned to her island, with Ares defeated. Wishes that they had more time, that he could tell her he's sorry, that he meant it when he said he loved her. (Sometimes, when his dreams aren't nightmares, she says it back. He doesn't let himself think these thoughts in the daylight hours.)

* * *

Sameer convinces Diana to go dancing with him on his next pass through London. 

"It's the best Ragtime club in the city," he promises, and even though Diana has no idea what that means, she's won over by the earnestness in his eyes. 

She puts on the nicest of her five Etta-approved outfits, and after dinner at the flat, he leads her to a hole in the wall club with a lovely little band. 

Sameer teaches Diana to Two-step and Turkey Trot and Foxtrot, and they twirl around the dance floor for a while, until it gets later and the club starts to clear out a little, and Diana gets bored. She ends up teaching Sameer a rollicking sort of jig that they dance on her island. The music isn't suited at all, but one of the musicians, a short woman with dark, curly hair and olive skin a few shades darker than Diana's, sees what they're trying to do, and breaks into an upbeat fiddling solo. 

Sameer grins at the violinist, tips his hat in thanks, and they spin jauntily around the room, until they're laughing and breathless. 

Diana goes to fetch him drinks when the band switches back to its normal music, and when she gets back, his eyes are still resting on the woman. If she thinks about it, he's been directioning his glances towards her all evening. 

"Oh," exclaims Diana in sudden understanding. "You came for the violinist."

"No," he protests. 

"You may be able to talk the skin off a cat in a dozen languages," she says, "but you cannot fool me." 

He sighs, knowing when he's lost. "Her name's Noor. I come to watch her play, when I can." 

"She keeps looking at you, too, you know." 

"Does she?" 

"Yes." 

When Sameer goes to get the next round, Diana sidles up to the stage and exchanges a few words with Noor. 

A little later, Diana walks home alone, but with a smile on her face. Even so, the good day doesn't stop the onslaught of vivid nightmares when she finally sleeps. 

* * *

"Do you have a sweetheart, back home?" 

The question startles Steve out of the vaguely existential stupor in which he'd found himself. 

He looks up at the man in the bed next to him, who's worse off still than he is. (An amputated leg and wicked scarring across his face and neck and chest. Breathing poorly, too.) 

"I did," says the man, when Steve takes too long to answer. "We were to be married when I came back from the War. But that was two years ago. I don't reckon she'll want me now, not like this. You don't look so bad, though," he adds, in what seems to be an encouraging manner. 

When Steve doesn't say anything, silence falls, and reigns supreme, until: 

"She was with the Resistance." It's as close to the truth as he can get. "Had the most beautiful, kind eyes. I suspect she's gone home, and if she has, I don't think I'll be able to find her again." 

"Tough luck, mate," says his companion. 

It is, he supposes, but he didn't deserve her anyways. 

The man doesn't make it through the night. Steve thinks, guiltily, that he should have gotten his name. (He's glad he didn't; it's easier when they don't have names.) 

* * *

Diana is exiting Etta's apartment to go to the corner store before it closes for the evening when she finds Charlie, slumped in the hall. 

Diana hasn't seen him in over a month. Not since the memorial. He's the only one of their ragtag little group who hasn't passed through and visited them. She's not sure if he hasn't been in London, or if he hasn't been up to seeing people. 

"Charlie?" She sits down next to him, voice soft, more to advise him that she's there than anything. 

The moment stretches, elastic, and for a while, they sit in silence. 

Finally, "I wanted to knock on the door." 

Diana pauses. She thinks maybe she understands Charlie just a little better, now. 

"I know you did." 

She wonders if this is the first time he's sat in their hallway, trying to knock. She wants to say something, but finds she doesn't know the right words, anymore. They congeal in her throat, sticky, equally hard to swallow down or cough up. 

Once again, it's Charlie, uncharacteristically, who breaks the silence. 

"I figured that I would die in this war," he says, voice rough, whether from emotion or disuse she's not sure. Maybe both. "But Steven was just so—I never really—that he—" His voice breaks, and he trails off. 

"I did not know what war really looked like," admits Diana. "I thought I did."

"Aye, so did we all." 

"I thought I was training for it, my whole life. But I do not think you can prepare for something like that."

"Nae, so you cannae." Then, after a beat: "Nor the nightmares."

"I cannot sleep, either," Diana admits again.

She feels him nod, but something in him has shifted. 

"You'd best carry on with whatever task you'd set out to do, Lassie," he says, voice cracking again. 

She gets up, pauses. "When I am home, I will always leave the door unlocked." 

She feels rather than sees him nod. 

He's not there when she gets back. 

* * *

As December slinks in, Steve is sent back to England, but it's to another hospital there, and try as he might to persuade them to let him go, the doctors remain unyielding: they have no one and no where to discharge him to, and he still can't move around on his own. He sends letters every day to Etta, hoping that she'll come and, for lack of a better term, rescue him, but the post is unreliable, and his letters remain unanswered.

The memories affect him most when he has nothing to do, so he works on regaining the strength in his limbs, even when it hurts. 

It is only as the end of the year sneaks up on them that he can finally move gingerly on crutches, and, entirely fed up with waiting for orders and paperwork and the like, he escapes from the hospital on a frigid Friday afternoon. The journey to London takes the better part of the day, and by the time the smoke-saturated city comes into focus, Steve is utterly exhausted. 

His first step is, of course, to go find Etta, as he always does after a mission.

Except she is no longer in the same offices, and he can't remember her home address, if he ever had it. An overwhelmed secretary snaps that she doesn't know where she's got moved to, and if he could please see himself out, she has work to do, thank you very much. 

It takes him two whole days of asking around before he can get a straight answer out of the absolute chaos that is post-war London.

Finally, on Christmas Eve eve, once again exhausted, he hobbles up to the building in which Etta is apparently now working. 

He is directed towards her desk by another harried looking secretary, and he finally finds her office—tiny and overrun with papers. The door is open, and he pauses just a second, because the scene is so mundane, after so very long: Etta is at her typewriter, clacking away with a coordinated precision that Steve could probably never hope to achieve. 

Steve knocks.

"Yes, yes, I'll be with you in a moment, I just have to get this memo out to Major—" her voice dies as she looks up and sees him there, silhouetted in the doorway. 

"Hi, Etta."

There are two very quiet moments where she stands, paling like she's seen a ghost and then— 

"I"—thwack—"mourned"—thwack—"you"—thwack—"you _absolute_ NUMPTY!" she yells, punctuating every word with a hard smack from a rolled up manual of some sort that she'd snatched off the desk. 

"Six _weeks_ of walking around, sniffling, trying to keep a stiff upper lip because you were KILLED IN ACTION, and then you waltz in here, right as rain with a _hi, Etta_? How dare you, of all the things _in my entire life_ —" 

She stops, suddenly, gaze focused over his shoulder, and he's momentarily surprised, because when Etta gets on one of her tirades, it can last a solid quarter of an hour at least, but then— 

"Etta, are you alright? I heard shouting." 

Her soft, lilting, accented voice washes over him like a balm, and Steve is mildly embarrassed to find that he might cry, right then and there. 

Steve gets the strange sensation of time slowing, although it may just be his slowed motor skills. He hauls himself around, hears Etta splutter, and finally—finally, after so long, after hoping, in spite of his own belief that he'd probably never see her again—rests his eyes on Diana. 

He has the advantage; she clearly didn't know the hunched and crutch-dependent figure Etta was yelling at was him. He sees the concern melt into confusion melt into disbelief, and then there are tears, large and glossy and unshed, in her eyes. 

"Steve?" He's never heard her sound anything but self-assured, but this is almost… meek. 

"Hi, Diana," he says, fighting every instinct he has to sweep her into a hug and never let go. Even if he were capable of throwing himself into her arms, he's not sure he has the right. 

"No," she says, taking a half step back. She rubs a hand over her eyes, tilts her head back. Talks softly to the sky. "Why are you doing this?" 

"Diana—"

"Steve," she says, refocusing on him with all the tenderness he never could quite bring himself to hope for. "My love, I am dreaming again." 

"Please, Diana, I'm here—"

"No," she says sadly. "The gods are punishing me. It gets more real every time. But I saw you die," she whispers. "I saw you die, Steve. The plane, it exploded." She tilts her head skyward again. "Please, leave me in peace. Leave me to deal with my own failings." 

A single tear tracks its way down her cheek, and Steve can't possibly take any more. He steps forward, discarding the crutches even though it is painful, and reaches out to gently wipe the tear away with his thumb. She leans into his touch, and tilts her head to get a better look at him, eyes suddenly very wide. 

" _Steve_?" Her voice is tiny, cracked, hopeful; a question and a miracle and a prayer, all rolled into one. 

"I'm here, Angel. It's not a dream; you can ask Etta." 

They are a hairsbreadth apart, far too intimate for an open-doored office in a subsidiary of the War Department, but Steve would claim he isn't much one for propriety anyways. 

Whatever Diana is searching for, she must find it in his eyes, because she erases the small gap between them and tentatively touches her lips to his. 

It feels like coming home. 

(It feels like absolution.)

It is soft and sweet, nothing like the messy, passionate memories his mind pulls up of Veld, but it is still all-encompassing, and he doesn't notice that Etta has slipped discreetly out of her own office and shut the door until they break apart several golden-tinged moments later. 

Neither one of them is willing to pull back completely, and their breaths mingle, their foreheads remain pressed together. 

When he traces his thumb over Diana's cheekbone, she shivers and pulls him even closer, tucking her face into the crook of his neck, a litany of soft murmurs spilling from her lips in a language he can't understand. 

Eventually, he can't physically stand anymore, and it is only then that he gently—and regretfully—extricates himself. When Diana takes in the number of wounds he sports, she gasps, and it is then that the whole, sordid tale comes out. 

* * *

"There is a slight complication," says Etta, sometime later, after Diana has left to beg off for the rest of the day, with a thoroughly nervous tinge to her voice. She even wrings her hands.

Steve just raises his eyebrows. Surely there's nothing _that bad_ after coming back from the dead. 

"Well, you see—it's just. The thing is."

"Etta, just _tell_ me."

"You're married!" Etta yelps, hand reflexively flying up to cover her mouth.

"I am _not_ ," says Steve, automatically. He'd remember if he had a _wife_. 

"You are. Legally. I'm so sorry! We needed paperwork for Diana, a way to explain why she was here. And you were dead, so—so Chief and Sameer and I, we decided, well, Steve doesn't have a will, and it's such a waste that all his things will be repossessed by the government, so we forged the documents!" 

Steve thinks he sees where this is going, but Etta isn't done. 

"We got Diana some paperwork to say she was from France, and then we said she was your war widow. Sameer forged her signature and then I forged yours—oh, don't look at me like that, I've been doing it for years—and Chief and Sameer were the witnesses and boom! We filed the paperwork, and she had possession of your things and a reason for being in London and no one batted an eye when I got her a job down the hall as a translator, and no one's batted an eye since because she does a bloody good job and gets done the work of three people."

Steve pinches the bridge of his nose, trying to knead away the start of a cluster headache. 

"But obviously you're alive now—whoops! I mean, we're all very thrilled, of course—hurrah!—but legally we've gotten you into a bit of a pickle."

"Does Diana—?"

"Know? Yes, of course. Well, er, not really. That is—" At Steve's look, Etta stops beating around the bush. "She knows the cover story, of course, but I'm not sure she's quite, er. Quite aware of the legal ramifications. We didn't have _her_ sign the documents because we were worried that she'd take, er, a sort of moral objection to that level of deception." 

"Oh hell, Etta."

"You weren't here," says Etta, chin wobbling. "Three times, you'd come back, right as rain, but it was different this time. We'd given up hope, and we didn't think there'd ever be anyone for the marriage certificate to legally bind." 

"So she's...what, Diana _Trevor_?" It sounds so wrong, even to Steve. He can't imagine her being anyone but Diana, Princess of Themyscira. 

"Oh, good heavens, no! She's Diana _Prince_. Said that was the only surname she'd accept, if she couldn't identify herself properly. But you know the French; it's not the fashion to legally take their husband's names, so no one really thought a thing of it." 

Steve smiles to himself. Was it really less than two months ago that he'd come up with that on the fly, to smooth over an introduction? It feels like a lifetime. 

Steve heaves a sigh. "We'll handle it, Etta. We'll figure it out."

* * *

They all go back to Etta's apartment. Even though Steve's is technically bigger, Diana has been living with Etta, because she's not used to living alone, without a community. And anyways, his needs to be aired out a bit to make it habitable. 

It's possible that if Steve weren't so impressed, constantly, at Diana's strength, he might be mildly embarrassed that she has to carry him up the four flights of stairs, but between his amazement that she lifts him like he weighs nothing and the fact that it's been a long day and he _hurts_ , he agrees without protest. 

Barely have they arrived at the apartment—with only enough time to put some soup on the stove to heat—when Etta is throwing on her coat again. 

"I've got a suffragettes' meeting this evening," Etta says cheerily. "So I'll just be popping out for a few hours, but Diana knows where everything is if you need it."

"But Etta," says Diana, "I thought the meeting was—"

"Tonight," Etta says, maintaining a false cheer. "But I'll take you to the next one." 

"But—"

The door shuts. 

"She's never managed to be subtle," Steve remarks fondly, at Diana's confused expression. 

"She was lying." Diana's gotten better at both recognizing lies and understanding why people tell them so often, but she's not used to Etta doing it to her. 

"Very much so."

Diana sighs. "Can I do anything to make you more comfortable?" 

Steve shakes his head. "You've already done more than enough." 

Diana looks up at the ceiling, too long and focused to be anything other than an attempt to hold back tears. (What has this world already done to her, Steve wonders, that she's stopped wearing her emotions so freely?) 

"I did not look for you," she says, finally. "I did not even try to recover your body." 

"I don't blame you," Steve rushes to say, "if that's what you're thinking. And you shouldn't blame yourself either, Diana. We both know the mechanics of that kind of explosion: I shouldn't have survived, and there shouldn't have even been a body left." 

"But you _did._ And you were stuck in those horrible field hospitals for six weeks." 

"That was not ideal," Steve admits. "But it's still not your fault." 

"I had dreams that you survived. That you were calling for us. I did not listen to those, either." 

"We call that shellshock," says Steve, "the nightmares." 

"Dreams can be given by the Gods—" 

"If any of the Gods were really intent on helping either one of us, they would have shown up on that airstrip and helped us—you—defeat Ares," Steve says fiercely. "If they were responsible for the dreams you had, then they were torturing you, not helping you."

She regards him carefully, as though she's trying to access whether his point is valid or not. 

"I've always been good at blasphemy," Steve offers. 

Diana snorts, but does not pursue the conversation further. Whether she had truly made peace with it or not, Steve does not know. Indeed, she leaves the room rather quickly, with the excuse of checking on the food. A number of minutes pass, and Steve gets the impression that she's collecting herself. 

"So," says Diana, upon returning with a bowl of soup and a determined look on her face. "Etta told me the truth about my documents. All of them." 

"Oh," says Steve, heart rate increasing. So they're having _this_ conversation. His soup sits on the coffee table, untouched; he hasn't the stomach to deal with both at the same time.

"She says that we are legally married, even though neither of us signed the documents." 

"Yeah, she, uh. She mentioned that to me, too."

"My people have something similar, you know, based on what Etta told me about weddings. We do not sign documents, but we do have ceremonies, rites, for lovers who desire to recognize a long term commitment." 

Steve tries to envision a world where documents aren't necessary, and where you're free to love whomever you please, just as you please. He's been to Paradise Island, but it was a quick enough stay that he still comes up short. 

Diana must take his silence as hesitance, or maybe ire, because she keeps talking. "What I am saying, Steve, is that even though it does not look exactly the same, I understand the implications of this type of partnership, and I would never force you to maintain it out of some sense of social propriety. Etta also told me about something called a divorce." 

This gets Steve's attention, jerks him out of his musings about women marrying women, and if his sister Sophia would want to marry her dear friend Anne if it were possible, and if, long before the war when he was much younger, if _he_ might have considered— "Diana, no!" he splutters, but she forges on, practical and blunt. 

"Etta has explained how divorce works, and since it is horribly sexist and _I_ can neither prove nor wish to accuse you of adultery or ill treatment, I give you permission to divorce _me_ on any grounds that you like." 

"Diana, I'm not about to—"

"Steve, I have no concern for my reputation in your society, so it does not _matter_ if you divorce me, and then you will not have to worry about the legal—"

"I love you!" blurts Steve. 

Diana stops dead, mid-rant. "I love you, too." 

Steve nods, absently, as if the fact that hearing the words out loud and concrete, that _she loves him,_ isn't an awe inspiring, humbling revelation that has half his insides dancing. "I love you," he says again. "And it's all a little out of order, and I don't have any experience with this, but I know that I love you, more than anything, and maybe it's a bit soon, but life is short and there's never a guarantee that there's _time_ , and I would ask you to marry me anyways."

"Oh," breathes Diana. 

"The only way I'll divorce you," Steve soldiers on, "is if you don't want to be married to me. Because I want to be married to you. I know what it means—legal ramifications and all—and I want it, Diana. I want to be your partner, and I want to know how your day is, every day, and I want to love and cherish you, and I want to be by your side when we find out what people do when there aren't any wars."

"Do you really mean that?" Diana's eyes are glistening, and Steve's might be too, for all he knows. He definitely feels like he might cry. 

"Yeah, I do," replies Steve, already wincing internally at how much of himself he just shared. "But Diana, if you want me to, I'll still divorce you. I'll do whatever you want." 

"Marriage means very little to me," says Diana, and Steve feels his heart drop. _How could he have gotten this all so wrong?_ "But you telling me all this, that you want a partnership, that means a great deal to me. I will gladly stay married to you, so long as you do not expect me to _obey_ or stay home."

Steve huffs out a relieved laugh. He can't imagine Diana staying home any more than he can imagine her being meek and unopinionated, or her being called Diana _Trevor_ , or something equally as ridiculous. And as for Diana _obeying_ —the thought is preposterous, and the day that happens is the day he marches straight down to hell and asks why it's frozen over, because he wants _his_ Diana back. 

"Never," he declares, and then kisses her. 

* * *

Napi returns the next day from Holland, just in time for the little Christmas Eve that Etta has thrown together. There's no tree—those are scarce, and expensive in the middle of the city—but she's got a few baubles to put up, and has promised a roast to Sameer and Charlie if they show up. 

Charlie arrives first, entering through the unlocked front door and immediately ensconcing himself in one of the sitting room armchairs in front of the fireplace. Diana notices he's arrived a few minutes later, when she and Napi come out of the kitchen, and goes to greet him with a kiss on the cheek, glad that he's come. Half an hour later, Sameer shows up with a little rap on the door, and their party is complete. There is absolute revelry as each discovers that Steve is alive. 

The wine and spirits are free flowing, and soon the reminiscing starts, entirely jolly now that a death no longer hangs over the group. 

When they're all gathered around the fire, Napi pulls a box from his sack, and immediately Charlie, Sameer, and Steve all let out raucous cheers. Upon closer examination, the box is colorful and says _Mensch ärgere Dich nicht_..."Do not get angry with me, man?" Diana asks in confusion, translating as she goes. 

"It's a German board game," Napi explains. 

"It's called that because you purposely knock other players' pieces out of play," Steve adds, gleefully. "Our first winter in the trenches, Chief had them to sell to the Germans, but one of the Englishmen we were on mission with bought a set. We played it all winter, until practically every piece had been lost and swapped out for a bric-à-brac of some sort."

When Diana expresses interest in how the game is played, Steve sets about explaining, interrupted every few sentences by Sameer and Charlie, who are bickering in the background about who the better strategist is, and who won the last time they played. 

In the first round, Diana trounces them all. 

"Beginner's luck!" Charlie cries, while Steve ducks his head, biting back a smile. He thinks he knows how a rematch will go. They're saved from that carnage by the fact that dinner is about to be ready, and Etta wants all hands on deck to finish it up. 

"I know none of you celebrate the way I do," Etta says as they sit down to eat, voice a little wobbly. (It's true: of the six of them gathered, none of them share the same religion. Etta and Charlie come closest, both falling under 'Christian', but anyone within the religion can tell you that Catholic and Presbyterian are _not_ the same.) "But Christmas, for me, is a time for family, and you all are my family, so I'm very pleased to be sharing it with you." 

Diana squeezes Etta's hand, and Steve says "Hear, hear!", and they all tuck into their food. 

"You know, the first time we were all in the same place at the same time was the Christmas Truce," says Sameer, later, when they're all stuffed and sated, and the Oddfellows murmur in agreement. 

Napi is the one who sees Diana's confusion, and leans in to explain as the others chatter on. Sameer appears to be telling a story, and Steve and Charlie are nodding and laughing. 

"During the Christmas of 1914, both sides laid down their weapons and refused to fight. There was singing and merriment, and then the next day, they went back to trying to kill each other. There was not a truce like that again," Napi says softly to Diana, and then, even lower, so that the others can't hear, like maybe he's just talking to himself: "It is entirely unique."

Diana wonders, not for the first time, if Napi experiences time in the same way she does, linear, one thing after the next. She's shaken from her reverie by the clear tones of Charlie's singing. 

"It's called _Silent_ _Night_." It's Steve who leans in to whisper, this time. "It was the first song we heard the Germans singing. Prettier in German, in my opinion, although maybe it was just the truce that accompanied it." 

"It is beautiful," she whispers back, and a tear trickles down her cheek as she thinks of the things that these lovely humans around her have had to endure. When Charlie catches her eye, she smiles wide, glad that he's still singing, despite it all. 

* * *

"There is something I would like to discuss," Diana declares, once Etta has left for her midnight mass, and the others have either departed or sprawled out on the couch cushions in front of the fire. Steve does a mental catalogue and realizes he never apologized for not believing her about Ares. 

"I'm sorry," he blurts, before she can clarify that this is, indeed, the conversation she wants to have. 

"What?" She looks genuinely perplexed, but Steve needs to clear the air on this, so he soldiers on. 

"That I didn't trust you. I'm sorry I didn't believe you when you told me Ares existed." 

"You are sorry?" she echos faintly. " _I am_ sorry." 

"Wait—what?" He can't think of what she can possibly be talking about.

"I said _awful_ things to you. About you."

Oh. The fight they had, after Veld and on the airstrip. 

"You were right, though, and you had every right to say so." 

"But I was not," Diana says emphatically. "You kept fighting. You believed in humanity even when they had nothing to give you in return. I judged you so harshly, and you proved every bit of it wrong. I am sorry." 

"You were trying to save everyone and end a war," says Steve. "I was trying to end a war and save the remnants." 

It makes sense, when he puts it like that. She was too green, and he was too cynical. It was bound to clash at some point. 

"And I still did not manage to save the one I really wanted to." Her voice is desperate, and she won't make eye contact. 

He thought they'd talked about this, but it seems it wasn't enough. In retrospect, he doesn't know why he thought it would be. Things don't go away just because you want them to. 

"But you _did_ defeat Ares," Steve reminds her. "And I'm still here." A pause and then, "Look, we could go a full ten rounds blaming ourselves for the things we did or didn't do and still get nowhere. I don't blame you, not even a little bit, and I don't want you blaming yourself, either."

"It seems we are both fighting with ourselves over an absolution the other is willing to give." 

"I'll take yours if you take mine," says Steve. 

"And we try to do better, always, moving forward," Diana says, nodding. 

"Just so." 

"I suppose I can agree to those terms." Diana's smiling, now, and it's taking everything in him not to close the very limited distance between them and kiss her. Then he remembers he has no good reason not to. 

When they break apart again, Diana says, "My people, we do not celebrate Christmas, but we do feast on the solstice, in honor of the sun's return and new beginnings. This feels like a new beginning to me." 

"To new beginnings," he echoes quietly.

* * *

The War lingers. Maybe it will never fully leave them. 

But it does recede slowly, bit by bit, illustrated in small ways. As the days bleed into weeks, the headlines on their morning paper pertain to the residual aspects of the War less and less, and they get the chance to establish a routine that has nothing to do with fighting, and everything to do with learning the nuances of each other. 

It is messy, and imperfect, but it is something that they get to learn _together_ , each simple discovery—each breakfast, each crinkling newspaper, each quiet turn around the kitchen danced to no music but their own heartbeats—tinged with the golden underpinnings of hope.

**Author's Note:**

> That's all for now, folx! Thanks for reading, even if it was an old and not-very-polished fic. I hope you're all having a safe and happy holiday season!


End file.
